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July 09, 2009

Stop marketing to yourself

Perhaps the biggest marketing mistake many businesses make is that they tend to market to themselves. By that I mean they assume that their customers have similar knowledge, experience, wants and needs to themselves. It is understandable… it’s your business and you want it to reflect your view of what the industry should be.

The big problem is, of course, most of your prospective customers (and existing members) don’t have similar knowledge, experience, wants and needs as you do. So your marketing message will never have the intended impact on the vast majority of its recipients.

Here are a few examples that I have seen in print materials and on the web:

The issue is how many dots you can reasonably expect your prospective customer (or existing member) to connect to know what you want them to know with your marketing communication.

For example, most people do not know the difference between Cybex and other brands of strength training equipment. Of course, you do because you researched long and hard, consulted extensively and deliberated conscientiously before making your purchase.

You are proud of the equipment and want people to know that you have spent considerable time and money to furnish them with some of the best equipment on the market… unfortunately it will still mean very little to most of the people who read it. My local health club recently spent tens of thousands of dollars on new equipment and I could not tell you the brand of any of it.

The question is… what exactly are you trying to say when you use the name Cybex? State-of-the-art… cutting edge… beautifully engineered… easy to use… preferred by strength trainers everywhere…

Health club equipment doesn’t have the same brand recognition or cachet as other products so don’t expect your prospective members to be able to draw any conclusion from a brand name. Tell them exactly what that brand means for them.

Similarly for service providers such as Les Mills… break it down for the prospective customer so they don’t feel alienated for not knowing about Les Mills. For example, ‘We Offers Les Mills Group Fitness Classes the premier providers of professionally choreographed (so you know it is safe and effective), regularly updated (so you don’t get bored), innovative (keeping you at the forefront of Group Exercise)… you get the idea.

Other statements like ‘Instructors are fully qualified’ give you the baseline generic statement that everyone else uses. You need to be able to differentiate your staff from the rest of the pack. Do they have more experience (We have over 100 years of combined experience…), better qualifications (Our instructors are all University qualified…), relevant interests (Tri-athletes, Bodybuilders, Blackbelts etc).

When you market to yourself you miss the opportunity to communicate with the majority of the market. It comes down to communicating your solutions not just features or benefits.

You will increase your conversion rate significantly when you can match your message with your market(s).